Elizabethan Quotes

• If I could create an ideal world, it would be an England with the fire of the Elizabethans, the correct taste of the Georgians, and the refinement and pure ideals of the Victorians.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Fire, Would Be, World

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• I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.

  Elizabeth I

  Leadership, Courage, Kings

  Speech to troops at Tilbury, England (1588).

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• The classical writers... playwrights, Jacobean, Elizabethan playwrights, all showed areas of all classes and how they live and painted them pretty authentically.

  Timothy West

  Class, Playwright, Areas

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• We don't go to Shakespeare to find out about life in Elizabethan England; we go to Shakespeare to find out about ourselves now.

  Jeanette Winterson

  England

  "The secret life of us" by Jeanette Winterson, www.theguardian.com. November 25, 2002.

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• Well, my wife always says to me, and I think it's true, it's very difficult for us to understand the Elizabethan understanding and enjoyment and perception of form as it is to say... it would be for them to understand computers or going to the moon or something.

  Mark Rylance

  Moon, Thinking, Wife

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

  Terry Pratchett

  Mind, Female, Three

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• Lord, what fools these mortals be!

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Dream, Stupid People

  'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1595-6) act 3, sc. 2, l. 115

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• The Elizabethan age might be better named the beginning of the smoking era.

  James M. Barrie

  Smoking, Age, Might

  James M. Barrie (2013). “My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke (Annotated Edition)”, p.51, Jazzybee Verlag

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• If music be the food of love, play on.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Inspirational, Romantic

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 1, sc. 1, l. 1

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• The nations which have put mankind and posterity most in their debt have been small states Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England.

  Bill Vaughan

  Israel, Florence, Minorities

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• But as my voice coach keeps saying, if we actually spoke the way they imagine the Elizabethan voice might have been, we wouldn't be able to understand it.

  Geoffrey Rush

  Voice, Might, Able

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• The course of true love never did run smooth.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Life, Summer

  'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1595-6) act 1, sc. 1, l. 132

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• Before the famine, which was in the 1840s, that was an emotional turning point... There are various documents showing how the Elizabethan English, in particular, were shocked by Irish displays of affection, by the way women acted toward strangers, walking up and putting their arms around them and kissing them right full on the mouth.

  Frank McCourt

  Kissing, Emotional, Mouths

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• What light through yonder window breaks?

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Romantic, Light

  'Romeo And Juliet' (1595) act 2, sc. 2, l. 1

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• Sometimes I joke that I'm an Elizabethan who's had the misfortune to be alive during the reign of the wrong Elizabeth.

  George Fetherling

  Alive, Reign, Sometimes

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• Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions.

  Amos Oz

  Thinking, Volcanoes, Lava

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

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• I think that Shakespeare had his male side and his female side extremely well developed. And this was a great quality of the Elizabethan, all-around Renaissance man. They were not afraid of their male side and their female side co-existing. This somewhere along the line got lost. And then it got misunderstood.

  Ben Kingsley

  Men, Thinking, Misunderstood

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• Considering the wealth of poetic drama that has come down to us from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, it is surprising that so little of any value has been added since.

  James Fenton

  Drama, Littles, Poetic

  "A licence for drama" by James Fenton, www.theguardian.com. December 6, 2002.

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• I love Bach, I love Beethoven, I love Mozart, I love the Beatles, I love you know, Stockhausen, I love many things. But for some reason I come back to Elizabethan music because it's a little bit like the Beatles.

  Tod Machover

  Love You, Love Is, Littles

  Source: bigthink.com

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• What then is tragedy? In the Elizabethan period it was assumed that a play ending in death was a tragedy, but in recent years we have come to understand that to live on is sometimes far more tragic than death.

  George P. Baker

  Years, Play, Tragedy

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• How I would love to be transported into a scented Elizabethan garden with herbs and honeysuckles, a knot garden and roses clambering over a simple arbor.

  Rosemary Verey

  Simple, Garden, Rose

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• Strangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's.

  Tod Machover

  Exercise, Tudors, Headphones

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers’ breath, of ropes of pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine.

  Virginia Woolf

  Drama, Flower, Wine

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.56, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I wasn't a trained actor, I was trained in musical comedy theater, and when you do that, the audience is completely part of the thing. It's like Elizabethan theater. You play the scene, and then you turn - the audience is part of it.

  Christopher Walken

  Play, Musical, Actors

  Source: www.aboutfilm.com

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• The Federal Building's large Ceremonial Courtroom, reserved for show trials, is veneered in executive teak. Bench, counsel tables, jury boxes, entrances, and exits -- all are as formally arranged as an Elizabethan stage. Only the drama is shapeless, at least to those of us who have never seen a trial before. We see only random movements, sequences, comings and goings, no form or agenda apparent. To us the action is less like watching a play than watching an aquarium.

  Shana Alexander

  Drama, Aquariums, Play

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